Helpster, a Bangkok-based company that matches employers with people seeking blue collar jobs, has banked $2.1 million to expand across Southeast Asia. Read More
Snap preps for the Street, Microsoft releases announcements benefiting the Linux and Macintosh ecosystems and Google Earth is now in VR. All this on Crunch Report. Read More
Electronics and water go together like, well, electronics and water. But how are you going to talk to your friends when you’re knee deep in snow or plunging down a mountainside on a bike? Bonx to the rescue. The Indiegogo-funded Bonx Grip brings group-chat to the masses. Shipping this month, the $139 device is coming to an extreme-sports fan near you imminently. Read More
Facebook could one day build facial gesture controls for its app thanks to the acquisition of a Carnegie Mellon University spinoff company called FacioMetrics. The startup made an app called Intraface that could detect seven different emotions in people’s faces, but it’s been removed from the app stores. The acquisition aligns with a surprising nugget of information Facebook… Read More
We got word earlier today that Verizon had acquired SocialRadar, a mapping startup founded by Blackboard co-founder Michael Chasen that promises to provide its users with far more accurate location data for businesses — down to where exactly a door is. Reached by phone, Chasen confirmed the acquisition.
Verizon, the corporate parent of TechCrunch and AOL, will use SocialRadar’s… Read More
Disney World’s nightly fireworks might soon have competition. Drones. Hundreds of drones lit up with LEDs and they’re all controlled by one person.
Intel turned to Disney to showcase its next generation drones. And these drones can do things fireworks cannot. Flying as a fleet, these Intel drones can paint the sky with three-dimensional images that twist and turn and come to life. Read More
Padmasree Warrior, CEO of NextEV, took the stage at the 2016 Los Angeles Auto Show to make a case for car 3.0. Noting the car of the future is likely to be electric and connected is not radical, but Warrior’s assertion that individual ownership of cars is not going to completely go away is less commonly heard at tech and auto events anymore. The cutting edge of automotive technology… Read More
Generally one thinks of robots as powerful, rigid things packed with motors and actuators. But they don’t have to be like that, and in fact it may be freeing for engineers to work outside those constraints. What if, for example, your robot was almost lighter than air? That’s the concept tested in this highly buoyant prototype created by roboticists at UCLA. Read More
Good luck explaining the intricacies of the real estate market to someone living in New York City. In most of the rest of the country, however, lockboxes are very much a thing for realtors — a spot where they can securely leave and pick up keys for access to an apartment or house. The products are also seeing a rise in popularity thanks to services like Airbnb, which require a key… Read More
On Tuesday at an exclusive invite-only event on a lot at Warner Brothers studios in Burbank , Calif. DJI announced its two newest drones: the Phantom 2 Pro and the Inspire 2, we were there to see the show. Read More
Spectacles by Snap are a lot of fun! Join us as we put them through their paces, try them out, talk to people on the street and just have a really great day. I would tell you more, but I don’t want to ruin it for you. Alright… enjoy the show. Read More
Every automaker seems to be partnering up for car sharing, and Hyundai is no exception. The carmaker is teaming up with WaiveCar, a startup offering ad-supported car sharing with a pilot program currently operating in Santa Monica. The team-up will see Hyundai’s first EV, the IONIQ, incorporated into WaiveCar’s fleet, beginning in LA. Hyundai is offering the IONIQ to WaiveCar users… Read More
You’re a sales associate at a big-box retailer and a customer just asked whether the latest iPhone 7 is in stock. You proceed to ask your colleague, Stuart, the same question, and he tells you the product is sold out. But there’s something odd about this scenario: You didn’t move an inch, and Stuart isn’t a person. Stuart is an artificially intelligent assistant that… Read More
It’s tough to contextualize a product like Halo Sport, because there really isn’t anything like them out there. They look like your standard pair of over-ear headphones (albeit a bit chunkier than average) coupled with a strange set of spikes that run down the inside of the band and come into contact with the wearer’s head.
Those spikes (the neuroprimers) essentially send… Read More
After I learned of this clever exploit from Samy Kamkar, my poor 2012 MacBook Air looks more vulnerable than venerable: Asleep on the table, its USB ports exposed, it could be hijacked in seconds by a malicious Raspberry Pi Zero called PoisonTap. No need for passwords, zero-days or million-dollar back doors — although a little social engineering to get me to leave the room might help. Read More
There doesn’t seem to be a hell of a lot in the way of hopefulness these days when it comes to bridging our divided society. But if Metallica and Napster can put aside nearly two decades of lawsuits and divisive rhetoric, surely there’s no divide the rest of us can’t cross. Seventeen years after the band (well, Lars Ulrich, really) filed suit against the then legally… Read More
Shoe manufacturer Toms is releasing a colorful lineup of Apple Watch bands made out of grosgrain fabric and leather. For every band purchased, the company will work with SolarAid to provide one year of solar light to an individual in need. And these bands are part of the Made for Apple Watch program, meaning that Toms is using genuine steel lugs and buckles. Toms became popular by providing… Read More
If you’re about to eat out and looking to choose a restaurant, you’ve got plenty of food and local recommendation apps to choose from first. But Tom Limongello, CEO of Truffle, argued that none of those apps really capture the experience of word-of-mouth recommendations — of getting that perfect tip from a friend.
With Truffle, on the other hand, you can send friends a… Read More
There is a blind spot in the development process that affects the general public. When applied to products where safety is a factor, it becomes a question of life and death. Read More
If you tend to turn to email to send yourself short reminders, instead of using a more feature-rich to-do list or task-management application, a new app called Later wants to help. Later aims to offer an alternative to Apple’s sometimes cumbersome Reminders by giving you an easier, faster way to set times to be reminded about upcoming tasks, as well as a way to get alerts when you… Read More
